Examining the treatment of religion in schoolbooks

Houghton Mifflin's Islamic Connection

William J. Bennetta

In a recent review, I showed that Prentice Hall's high-school book
World Cultures: A Global Mosaic serves as a vehicle for
Muslim propaganda. Long passages in World Cultures are
devoted to promoting Islam, to making American students embrace
Islamic religious beliefs, and to winning converts for Allah. In
these passages, Muslim myths are disguised as historical
information, Muslim superstitions are disguised as facts, and both
the origin and the content of Islam are cloaked in seductive lies
[see note 1, below].

Prentice Hall clearly is disseminating religious-indoctrination
material produced by some Muslim pressure group, but nowhere in
World Cultures has Prentice Hall provided any clue to the
pressure group's identity.

Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of a 7th-grade textbook called
Across the Centuries, has been less discreet. Across the
Centuries is freighted with Muslim religious propaganda, much
like the stuff in World Cultures -- but in the case of
Across the Centuries, we can infer where the propaganda
originated. When we look at the list of "Consultants" shown on the
book's copyright page, we find "Shabbir Mansuri, Founding Director,
Council on Islamic Education, Fountain Valley, California." And
when we look at the lesson titled "Muhammad and Islam," in the
book's third chapter, we discover what the word "Education"
apparently means to Mansuri and his Council.

The "Muhammad and Islam" lesson begins, on pages 58 and 59, with a
lengthy bout of Koran-thumping. Islamic woo-woo is peddled as
history, and claims such as these are peddled as facts:

In AD 610 Muhammad met a "being" whom he later "identified" as
"the angel Gabriel, or Jibril (juh BREEL) in Arabic." (How
Muhammad performed that feat of identification isn't explained.)

"From Jerusalem, both Muhammad and Gabriel ascended into heaven,
where Muhammad spoke to God."

Muhammad's God, Allah, was the same as the "God of other
monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity." (To create the
impression that Islam is compatible with Judaism and with
Christianity, Muslim propagandists in America continually publicize
the claim that Allah is the same God who is worshiped by the Jews
and the Christians. Their claim is absurd. For more about this,
see my review of Prentice Hall's World Cultures.)

Gabriel told Muhammad that Muhammad's God had created man "from
a clot of congealed blood." (Across the Centuries thus
conveys to students a claim which appears in sura 96 of the Koran.
Across the Centuries doesn't disclose that this superstition
involving blood is contradicted by other notions that appear in
other suras. In sura 6, for example, we read that man was made from
clay -- and in sura 18, we see that man was made "from dust, then
from a drop.")

Gabriel provided Muhammad with "revelations" which "confirmed"
that Muhammad was "the last messenger in a long line of prophets
sent by God." (It is important, apparently, for students to learn
that one lump of woo-woo can be "confirmed" by other lumps of
woo-woo -- but it is not important, apparently, for students to
understand that the "long line of prophets" which culminated in
Muhammad included all the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, along with
Jesus of Nazareth. Muslims contend that Muhammad, in his role as
"the last messenger," has superseded all of those earlier figures,
but this isn't explained in Across the Centuries.)

On page 60 students read a paragraph about the Ka'bah, the big
Muslim shrine at Mecca:

One of the first things Muhammad did [after he captured Mecca]
was to forgive all those who had opposed Muslims for so long. He
also removed the idols from the Ka'bah. Thus the Ka'bah was again
dedicated to the one God, as it had been in the time of Abraham.
The area around the Ka'bah became the first mosque, or Muslim house
of worship.

Again, Houghton Mifflin and the Council on Islamic Education are
deluding students and are parading religious myths in the garb of
history. Abraham is a mythical character who appears in many
stories in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis. Although those
stories in Genesis do not suggest any connection between Abraham and
Mecca, the Muslims have worked Abraham into one of their own myths
about the origins of the Ka'bah -- myths in which the Ka'bah is
built and rebuilt, at Mecca, by a succession of legendary figures
[note 2]. In the passage that I've quoted from Across the
Centuries, the phrase "in the time of Abraham" is a
pseudohistorical absurdity, and so is the linking of Abraham with
"the one God." The Hebrew Bible's first suggestions of monotheism
appear not in stories about Abraham but in stories about a later
character, Moses, who is the hero of the Book of Exodus.

On page 61, students read about the Koran:

Muhammad's revelations occurred from 610 until his death in 632.
Although he was not literate himself, Muhammad had his revelations
written down by his companions. Many of them memorized the whole
Qur'an [Koran] and recited it in his presence. By the time of his
death, all the revelations had been compiled into one collection,
the Qur'an.

That is another Islamic myth: Muslims claim that the text of the
Koran was checked and verified by Muhammad himself, and that it
therefore must be an inerrant record of the "revelations" that
Muhammad received, through Gabriel, from Allah. In truth, however,
the origins of the Koran are unknown. As I noted in my review of
Prentice Hall's World Cultures, scholars haven't been able to
determine when the Koran's various parts were written, or who wrote
them, or how many versions were written and rewritten before the
final, canonized version was assembled.

Later in Houghton Mifflin's "Muhammad and Islam" lesson, the notion
that Islam is compatible with Judaism and Christianity is
bolstered by the deceptive claim that "Many prophets and holy
people who are important figures in the Bible are also described
[sic] in the Qur'an" and by the statement that "Christians
and Jews are respected as 'people of the book' by Muslims, and all
their prophets are revered." (Muslim propagandists in America often
publicize the claim that Muhammad called Jews and Christians "people
of the book" and awarded them special protection, but the
propagandists never describe how Muhammad "protected" Jewish and
Christian communities during his conquests: If he didn't destroy
them outright, he robbed them, put them under Muslim governance, and
compelled them to make regular payments of tribute to Muslim
collectors. Nor do the propagandists tell about the Koran's
declaration that Muslims must not accept Jews or Christians as allies
or friends [note 3] -- "O believers, do not hold Jews and Christians
as your allies. They are allies of one another; and anyone who
makes them his friends is surely one of them; and God does not guide
the unjust.")

Near the end of the "Muhammad and Islam" lesson, a coat of
whitewash is applied to a notorious Islamic expression:

An Islamic term that is often misunderstood is jihad (jee
HUHD). The term means "to struggle," to do one's best to resist
temptation and to overcome evil. [page 64]

By whom is jihad "often misunderstood"? Historically, the
word jihad has been associated with Muslim wars against
infidels, and anybody who can read a newspaper knows that some of
today's most conspicuous Muslims use jihad, quite
unambiguously, to signify the business of destroying disbelievers
and destroying the disbelievers' institutions. These Muslims
understand what they mean by jihad, and so do we. Resisting
temptation isn't what they have in mind.

I have shown, I believe, that what Houghton Mifflin seeks to pass
off as a history lesson is an exercise in deception, religious
preaching, myth-mongering, and religious indoctrination. I now
assert that Across the Centuries is unfit for use in any
public school in this country, because the Supreme Court of the
United States has declared that it is illegal for a public school to
deliver instruction "tailored to the principles or prohibitions of
any religious sect or dogma" [note 4]. The "Muhammad and Islam"
lesson in Across the Centuries fits that description to
perfection.

PostscriptAcross the
Centuries has been adopted for use in the public schools of
California -- so we again have seen how the California State Board
of Education, during its textbook-adoption proceedings, protects the
interests of big schoolbook companies while it scorns the interests
of students and (if need be) spurns the law of the land. Houghton
Mifflin and the Council on Islamic Education have friends in
Sacramento, and those friends are as corrupt as they can be.

See "Appendix II. -- The Bayt Ullah" in Volume 2 of Richard F.
Burton's renowned Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to
Al-Madinah and Meccah, originally published in 1855. A paperback
edition has been issued by Dover Publications and can be obtained
easily. Teachers who must compose lessons about Islam should be
sure to read Burton's superb memoir, which includes accounts of
many Islamic superstitions that Burton encountered when he went to
Arabia in 1853, adopted the role of a Muslim pilgrim, and visited
such attractions as the Ka'bah, the tomb of Muhammad, and the tomb
of "no less a personage than Sittna Hawwa, the Mother of mankind."
[return to text]

See the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards v. Aguillard
(1987). [return to text]

William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the
California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook
League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes
often about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false
"history" in schoolbooks.

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